Emmanuel Macron, French Economy Minister, Hints at Presidential Run

PARIS — The re-election prospects for France’s weakened president, François Hollande, clouded further Tuesday night as his economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, all but stepped into the ring against him in next year’s presidential elections at a crowded rally in central Paris.

Mr. Hollande’s record-breaking unpopularity in a country troubled by a stagnant economy and fears of new terrorist attacks makes him one of the shakiest of European leaders.

Already, he has been forced to agree to a primary among leftist parties, including his own Socialists, to decide the 2017 candidate — a first for a sitting president.

Polls show him far behind veteran politicians from France’s traditional right. At the same time, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front is steadily advancing in a climate of rising populism both in Europe and the United States.

Now the restive Mr. Macron, 38, the youngest man in Mr. Hollande’s cabinet, can be counted as a new element in Mr. Hollande’s growing political woes. On Tuesday, he stepped close to the edge of declaring his own independent candidacy for next year.

Mr. Macron, a former banker, has spent two years questioning Socialist orthodoxy on doctrines like the 35-hour workweek and ironclad job protections, and this spring he founded his own political movement, En Marche, or On Our Way.

Until government colleagues began giving him the cold shoulder over his undisguised political ambitions, he had been the standard-bearer for the pro-capitalism wing of the Socialists.

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President François Hollande of France, left, at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Wednesday after a weekly cabinet meeting.CreditStephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But Tuesday night, he cast away allegiance to the party, and in over an hour of lofty rhetoric, Mr. Macron repeatedly suggested in front of thousands of cheering supporters that he was the man “to change the country.”

He cast himself as an iconoclast willing to upset the establishment.

En Marche is “against the established order,” Mr. Macron declared, the one to “transform the country” in an era calling for “a fresh breath” and when “we must overcome the divisions” of the traditional parties. He said that France had a “furious desire for things to change.”

That last point is far from clear. Throughout the spring and summer, France has been hit by a wave of strikes and demonstrations, most supported by a majority of the population, protesting a modest economic overhaul law partly inspired by Mr. Macron’s pro-free-market ideas.

The limited overhauls he had earlier proposed — opening up intercity bus routes and loosening restrictions on Sunday work hours — had to be forced through Parliament last year by the Socialists.

Indeed, angry anti-Macron union demonstrators besieged the Left Bank meeting hall where the economy minister spoke Tuesday night, forcing his supporters to run a gantlet of police officers and protesters.

Mr. Macron, repeatedly casting himself and his movement as France’s top change agents, called En Marche an “assembly of progressives” that “believes in liberty and justice.”

But the crowd Tuesday night, which seemed affluent and monochromatic, did not appear to reflect the multicultural reality of urban and suburban France.

Mr. Macron was introduced by an enthusiastic young woman who described herself as an “entrepreneur” who had spent six years in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Macron has irritated his colleagues with his ambition — “It’s time for all this to stop,” his boss, Prime Minister Manuel Valls, was heard muttering Tuesday afternoon — and at the rally, the young minister stopped just short of gratifying his supporters.

He did not overtly declare his candidacy, and he did not resign from the government, as some within it are saying he must do.

But he came very close. “Nothing can stop this movement now,” he said to cheers. “This movement, we will carry it together to 2017, and all the way to victory!” he shouted.

And he got in a dig at his other boss, Mr. Hollande: “Our country is weary of promises that have not been kept,” Mr. Macron said, assuring the crowd he understood the “huge transformations” that were taking place in France’s economy and society.

But the French political scientist Gérard Grunberg underlined in an interview the difficulty of Mr. Macron’s political position.

“It is very difficult for him to go up against François Hollande,” he said. “On the other hand, he wants absolutely to be a candidate. He is playing double or nothing.”

But Mr. Grunberg dismissed Mr. Macron’s strategy of presenting himself as an anti-establishment candidate. “It’s stupid, because he’s so much a member of the establishment, he can’t play the populist card,” he said, noting his close connection to “the ruling classes” and the difficulty he will have connecting with the less-exalted in French society.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Economy Minister of France Hints He May Run for President. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe